In the digital age, organizations increasingly rely on digitally-stored data. To protect against data loss, an organization may use a backup system to back up important data. Traditional backup systems may periodically create a full backup by capturing all allocated blocks (e.g., sectors or clusters) of a volume. Between full backups, a backup system may capture intermediate backups, referred to as incremental backups, which include blocks that have changed since the previous incremental or full backup. An incremental backup may be orders of magnitude smaller and faster than a full backup.
Unfortunately, backup systems may consume significant amounts of computing resources. For instance, backups may consume storage space, and transferring data for backing up may consume I/O bandwidth and network bandwidth. Additionally, the more data there is to back up, the longer backup operations may take to perform. For example, traditional backup systems may scan a volume for any changed files in preparation for an incremental backup. As file systems manage an ever-increasing number of files, this overhead may pose significant costs. By competing for computing resources, backup and restore operations may sometimes interfere with the performance of primary applications. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved systems and methods for performing incremental backups.